Veal Stock

I know, I know, the life of a cook-through blogger can’t always be a glamorous whirlwind of fine food and great beer. But still, since first flicking through the recipes in Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food, the thought of spending the best part of a day nursing a stock pot hasn’t exactly been filling me with excitement. So this recent Sunday past, when, despite the glorious London weather, the combination of the final Premier League football games of the season and the Monaco Grand Prix would see me confined indoors and glued to the TV, I decided to put the time to some use and make some proper stock from scratch.

I have my eye on a few upcoming recipe attempts that call for beef or veal stock. Whilst it is always tempting to cheat on the stock and buy something ready made from the supermarket or butchers, I am really keen to keep my cook-throughs as authentic as possible. The importance of good stock can’t really be underestimated, I think its one of the things that makes restaurant food stand out from home cooking (that and a half ton of butter). So it was with this in mind (well actually this, Newcastle United and Jenson Button in mind) that I got down to boiling some bones.

I popped down to Porterford Meats to see if they had any veal bones for me. What I thought might have been an unusual request was met fairly matter-of-factly with a large bag of frozen veal bones, for which they charged me just a couple of quid.

Before the grand prix got under way, I started by roasting the bones in order to brown them,  which would hopefully ramp up the final flavour of the stock. I simply placed the bones onto a roasting tin, drizzled with olive oil and put them into a hot oven for an hour.

Whilst the bones were roasting I got on with frying off the vegetables. To the classic mirepoix of carrots, celery and onion I added a roughly chopped fennel bulb.

Into a large stock pot (and you really do need a large stock pot for this)  I added a good slug of olive oil and then fried the vegetables on a high heat until they had begun to go a golden brown. At his point I stirred in a couple of tablespoons of tomato puree and continued to cook for a couple of minutes more. I then added the browned veal bones and enough water to just about cover the contents of the pot.

As the water slowly came to the boil, scum began to form on the surface. I took a spoon and skimmed off as much of this as possible. When the water had reached a rolling boil and the surface had been skimmed I added in the remaining ingredients of button mushrooms, bay leaves, peppercorns and thyme and then topped up the pan with more water so that the stock pot was almost full.

Once the pot was back up to a simmer there was nothing much left to do but wait. I let the stock simmer gently for about another five hours or so until plenty of the water had evaporated and the stock had taken on a nice, deep flavour and colour. Finally, I passed the contents of the pot through a sieve and portioned out the finished stock into bags ready for the freezer.

Was it worth all that effort? Well, I will find out when I use the stock in my next recipe attempt, but I’m certainly hoping so! And, regardless, at least Jenson Button won the GP…